The Celebration of Community, Culture, and the Arts

Queen Bee is a Fine Artist and International Award Winning Tattooist. She’s a part of Nashville Black Artists Renaissance. As the owner operator at One Drop Ink Tattoos, she is an active member of the community sponsoring charitable events, teaching classes and supporting schools and other community building endeavors

Nashville based self taught indigenous artist, Nizhoni, brings eye capturing pieces that are as unique, as her. With Navajo/Creole energy, Nizhoni not only creates her art from her dreams, but also from surrounding vibes and makes them reality. With no theme, Nizhoni prides her artistic style on being set pieces, all while giving her pieces the ability to stand alone! She credits her ancestry, which allows her to flow naturally and freely on the canvas. Nizhoni enjoys the joy her pieces bring, because she believes her art will speak to you and you only in a unique way.

Bryant’s work addresses the challenges of the Black experience, but it does so through celebration. Celebrating Black children. Celebrating Black families. Celebrating Black culture. By doing so, he hopes to explain his love for the South. Beyond that, Bryant also hopes to serve as an example for other Southern artists by proving they can achieve their professional goals without moving to New York or Los Angeles

Shabazz Larkin is known for creating colorful and often haphazard images with paint on canvas, books and in sculpture. With a focus on portraiture, poetry and immersive visual storytelling, he often deals with issues of history, spirituality and fatherhood.

Larkin Art & Company was founded by Shabazz Larkin, a children’s book author and illustrator, making his picture book illustrator debut with Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table and his author/illustrator with A Moose Boosh: A Few Choice Words About Food. Both were named Notable Children’s books by the American Library Association and published by Readers to Eaters

Woke3 is a muralist and studio artist from Nashville, TN. Woke3 has a special gift: he has the ability to make people feel connected, appreciated, respected, and completely submerged in his art works. His works are greatly praised by the community for being inclusive, diverse, and having the ability to show how no one thing is greater than another.

Artist Statement

“I create art that is meant to be a reflection of who I am in relation to what’s observed in and outside of myself.”

Sponsors committed to this year’s Art Gala include AB Hillsboro Village, Thirty Tigers, Mono Mundo Recordings, Slumerica, Liberated Ground, Kyro Ink and many more.